Morris Minor Owners Club

The Lenham used to scare me with the performance. Like being inside an enclosed rollerskate on amphetemines but it is now somewhat retired since the age of 40 has brought all sorts of aches and pains that made me convert to Merc SL500 propulsion for the daily commute.
I used to have a spaceframe lightweight Midget with a race engine that did nothing until about 3000 rpm whereupon it would attampt to launch itself into goestationary orbit. No windscreen and 2.75 inch of ground clearance for your backside (exhaust sat outside) so it could be driven at full speed under most carpark barriers. Great fun.

The Lowlight ought to be a bit more sedate and grown-up.

RobThomas wrote: I used to have a spaceframe lightweight Midget with a race engine. No windscreen and 2.75 inch of ground clearance for your backside (exhaust sat outside) so it could be driven at full speed under most carpark barriers. Great fun.

The Lowlight ought to be a bit more sedate and grown-up.

That must have made you popular with any passengers

RobThomas wrote:Sadly, the car belongs to 'er indoors. She wants Mist green but I have altered it to a light Landrover green (code HCD) cellulose in the hope that she won't notice. Easier to match it, you see. The original was obviouslt dark Romain green but the whole car was this light green when we got it so she wanted something similar. I'm happy to do any mods that can be changed back in the future but nothing permanent to such a rare vehicle.

This colour. (Click the light green tab in the middle of the colours)
http://www.paintman.co.uk/paint-colour- ... ies-1.html

I didn't realise that the light green colour I saw the car in was not original. No matter, it really suits the car and I think your wife is right in wanting you to re-paint the car in that light green colour, or one close to it.
If she does ask why the colour looks different, just say- "ahh the paint on the car was faded, this coat of paint is new, I expect that is why it looks a little different"


Edit, just followed that link and that landrover green is much more grey than your convertible was. I think your wife may spot that one. If you want to match the paint it last had, look at some light greens with more of a hint of turquiose about
them.

Edit again, and I know this is none of my business, but I think that Tyrolite Green off this paint chip looks to be a closer match and according to the site is a Morris colour.

Her first choice was Mist green which then started to lean towards a more Porcelain green. Since neither colour was an original I went for the LR colours as it wouldn't be so hard to match, it being a more recent colour. I've got a 1/2L of cellulose to try on a wing when it comes back. That will allow us to compare it with the tan leather interior we have for it.

The Tyrolite-esque colour on the car when we bought it seems to have been a brushed emulsion finish rather than an auto cellulose.

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Mrs Rob Thomas here. Don't worry I am fully aware of his liaisons at the paintshop! I now have a little model with the Landrover green 'slapped' on so I can match piping and trim to these leather seat covers. Us ladies like our swatches you know!

thats a great colour good luck with it

I found a rear axle and springs in the scrapyard. It has a 4.22 diff but I needed 4.55 so I had a dive into the sheds and found 2x 4.55, both covered in grime and one resting in a pile of shredded paper (rat or mouse nest?). Plenty of WD40 and some oil and one of them seems fine. The original 7-thin-leaf springs were quite soft and flat so I salvaged the 2 bottom leafs to pack out the slightly low 5-leaf springs from this scrapyard car. For some reason I have 3 new sets of U-bolts, all of which were too long and needing spacers to stop the nuts bottoming out on the threads.
This scrapper is perhaps the first car I've ever owned without any sighs of leaks from the wheel bearing seals. Hope this stays after I've changed the diff.
It all looks quite nice with the 5-inch wheels and hubcaps with the M wheeled out of them. I'm too tight to buy new Van hubcaps, yet.

(And, yes, I've got 2 filler plugs and one drain plug!)

New water elbow arrived from John Vine today. Quick polish and it comes up quite well. The water jacket also got a bit of a clean up plus a bit of polish on the stainless exhaust.[frame][/frame]

It's gonna look good!

Didn't I copy the idea of polishing from you, Alan?

I've a feeling that I'm going to have to polish up the alloy head, too, before it is fitted. Now, that is going to take a bit more than a few minutes!

A few hours spent sorting out a carb for the car. The original 1949 carb has the float chamber to the rear of the engine bay, close to the exhaust. Since we plan to keep the car, I've put a later carb on it and kept the original safe for future restoration. I still need to polish the carb body and chamber top.
Do all MM carbs lack a spring in the chamber and do they all have the heavy brass pistons?[frame][/frame]

I've used the original Imperial threaded nuts on the car but will add the brass 5/16 BSF ones once they've had a good polishing. Then it will be the turn of the oil filter assembly which will either get polished or replaced with a remote take-off so that I can place the filter element elsewhere to get the 'Hot Box' mounted nearer to the exhaust.

I have been guilty of polishing but I think you have overtaken me!

RobThomas wrote:Do all MM carbs lack a spring in the chamber

Yes.
Depending on clearances, you might need to play around with different oils. I ended up using ATF in mine.

This week I have mostly been polishin'.[frame][/frame]

I started by grinding off the casting marks and then got a bit of shine going by using a polishing mop in an electric drill.


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I had a crack at polishing those filler caps and have made some progress. The steel cover with the lettering on it was rotten on both of the caps I cleaned up so I had to take out the rivet and remove the steel bit, thus losing the wording on them. Anyone know where to get the graphics for the filler cap? Has anyone got a good picture of the graphics that I might use to copy it onto plastic?[frame][/frame]

Looking super clean and shine, nice work

A couple of problems and maybe some solutions.

The inlet manifold touches the head in 2 places so I think that maybe a thicker manifold gasket is needed. Anyone else found this problem? half way along the back of the manifold and just below the thermostat.

Next, I needed to drill the carb to take vacuum from the butterfly area. I then looked at a srs2 carb and found that the whole carb body was interchangeable and cosmetically similar. Easy choice! Now I can run a vacuum distributor which will give me better mileage and maybe some improvement in the overall performance due to the reduction in 'compromise' in the tuning.[frame][/frame]

I've also made a brass stub to allow me to use my ancient REDEX injector.

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Polishing the carb body took me over 2 hours and I used a Dremel with a grit wheel, some 400 grit wet-n-dry paper and then some polishing compound on a tiny felt mop in the Dremel. The photos don't flatter in that they seem to show up imperfections that you don't notice in daylight.

They look plenty shiny from here!

Health and safety will want you to put a warning notice on the bonnet so people wear sun glasses before opening it

RobThomas wrote:The inlet manifold touches the head in 2 places so I think that maybe a thicker manifold gasket is needed. Anyone else found this problem? half way along the back of the manifold and just below the thermostat.

I wonder if your manifold is off a different type of sidevalve MM. I know it's different in design to the one on my engine.

My inlet manifold is a 'log' type - yours is similar to a 1000 type design. Maybe the log type sits a bit lower in that area.

This is the only photo I have to hand of my engine bay so it's not the best but you can just see the end of my manifold & make out the plug at the end of the 'log'.

My manifold had a similar prob and i got a long length of abrasive paper, stuck it on a strip of melamine faced board and rubbed the mating face flat, took some time to do .Don't press too hard or you will still have a non flat surface . do you have access to a machine shop that would be able to set up on a machine that surfaces heads,also I had a prob with the exhaust flange same treatment